


Born to Be Down

by Fudgyokra



Series: Poly Titans [1]
Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series), Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Cuddling, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Humor, Oblivious Garfield is Oblivious, Other, Polyamory, Pre-Canon, Pre-Poly, Pre-Relationship, Slice of Life, Sweet, Team as Family, Teen Romance, Teenage Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 09:56:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12230547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fudgyokra/pseuds/Fudgyokra
Summary: The story of how they came to be.





	Born to Be Down

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s the prequel to “Her Words Are Swimming Through His Ears” (/works/12222396), not that you need to read that to understand this one! I think I’m going to make a series out of this.

Everything was easy-going about him, sometimes annoyingly so. Garfield had this air like he couldn’t be bothered to care about anything, but over the months that Victor had lived in the tower, he’d come to realize that this was a front. Really, Garfield cared quite deeply about a lot of things.

Victor was the newest addition to the Titans, but they welcomed him in like they’d known each other all their lives. Days at the beginning of his initiation were never tense; he spent a lot of time playing video games with the other boys or chatting existentially with Rachel, who used to just bum him out but then turned out to be a hell of a conversationalist when she wanted to be.

Currently, Garfield regarded him over some horrid concoction of tofu eggs and ketchup. “Morning, Cy!” His smile blossomed easily, showing all his teeth.

Victor wrinkled his nose. “What is that smell?”

“Very funny,” Garfield answered, just before sliding the eggs from the pan onto a plate. “I’m cooking this morning, so suck it up and eat.”

“It’s always your turn to cook,” Victor complained, but took the plate he was offered anyway. “You and Kori are gonna kill me. I call dibs on tomorrow’s breakfast.”

Garfield looked at him with sparkling eyes. “You can cook?”

“Duh,” Victor said, lifting a forkful of _tofegg_ to his mouth. He paused before he got very far. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

 _Like that_ was in reference to the way the other boy looked at him like he’d personally put the stars in the sky. He didn’t know whether to feel annoyed or embarrassed. “Well, ya see,” Garfield began conversationally as he started the next batch, “it _is_ just me and Star who cook around here, and I’m not, like, _good_ at it.”

“Is she?” Victor asked.

“I genuinely do not know what passes as edible on her planet,” Garfield joked. “But Rae hates doing it and Dick almost burned the whole tower down making toast once, so.”

Victor considered this. Then, after his moment of thought, he smiled brightly at the other. “Well, BB, it’s about time y’all took a load off. I’ll cook tomorrow.”

“Yeah?” Garfield asked with a pleased grin. “I’m holding you to it, dude.”

“Trust me, it’d be my pleasure,” he promised, glancing down at his breakfast with a grimace.

“Ha- _ha_ ,” Garfield deadpanned as he slid his own food onto a plate and dragged his chair obnoxiously close to Victor’s, despite there being plenty of room around the table. “Remember, I don’t eat meat.”

“Trust me, man. I know.”

//

It was painfully, horribly obvious that Garfield was over the moon for Rachel Roth. The way he looked at her, tried to make her laugh even when it’d become evident she wasn’t the comical type, it all just seemed to click perfectly into place. Victor was sure Rachel knew; she was very perceptive, not that you had to be with someone as obvious as Garfield.

When he approached her about it, though, she seemed skeptical. “Beast Boy?” she asked him from her spot on the bench. When he took the seat next to her, she didn’t storm away, so he figured that was a good sign.

“Um, yeah. It’s majorly obvious.”

Rachel rolled her eyes and pulled her legs into a crisscross position. Victor didn’t see how she could fit all of her onto that tiny bench when he could barely fit half his ass on it. She was just so _little_ , even compared to Garfield, who had to be just about the scrawniest boy he’d ever seen in his life.

“I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, Cyborg,” she said, interrupting his thoughts and making him feel strangely like he’d been caught doing something bad. He didn’t realize he’d tensed until she looked at him with brows furrowed. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, thanks.” He looked out over the water, and Rachel followed his gaze.

“I see what this is,” she said at length, making him spring up and hold his hands out in defense.

“It’s not like that!” he exclaimed, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. It was loud enough to gather the attention of the other Titans in the training yard, each of whom looked at him with their brows high on their foreheads. “Err, I mean, you know, it’s—”

“ _You_ like _him_.”

Victor froze, blinked in mechanical intervals for a while. Eventually, he cocked his head and had to ask, “What makes you say that?”

“When you first got here, you gravitated to him immediately. You two are practically inseparable.”

“So are Robin and Star,” he said, like that was a good argument. Pointedly, Rachel gave him a withering look, and he got the point. “…Well.” He pursed his lips, looked across the training field, then sat back down with a sigh. “Listen, I’m not saying I _don’t_ , but that’s not the point I’m trying to make.”

For the first time he’d ever seen her, Rachel smiled at him. An honest-to-god, fond smile—the kind she usually reserved for Garfield’s tawdry attempts at garnering laughs. Or, rather, the moments he spent sulking afterward, when they fell flat. Then, just as quickly as it came, it was gone. She looked away. “Truthfully, I don’t know what he would see in me. I’m just…me.”

“Yeah? That’s kinda the point.”

“That isn’t a good thing.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

Victor sighed again. He couldn’t think of anything useful to say to that, so he kept quiet. The silence was short-lived anyway, because Kori floated over to them with Dick in tow and Garfield bounding after in a cloud of his typical bubbly laughter. “Done already?” he asked, directing the question at Dick.

“Beast Boy promised us you’d be making breakfast,” the boy answered, “and I think we could all do with some real food, finally. No offense, Star.”

“None taken,” Kori answered sweetly.

“Um, hello? Where’s _my_ apology?” Garfield asked. “My cooking is fine!”

“Not the word I’d use,” Victor teased, watching with satisfaction as Garfield’s face assembled into an attractive pout, with pointed teeth poking up past his lip. It disappeared when he looked at Rachel, a certifiable slap in the face to Victor, who frowned and stood. “Guess I’ll go ahead, then,” he said, taking the lead as he headed back to the tower.

Dick and Kori exchanged concerned glances.

Garfield watched him go, then looked at Rachel. “Who crapped in his cornflakes?”

The question went without answer as the rest of the team headed up the hill together, tittering with excitement over the prospect of a good, home-cooked meal.

//

There was bacon. _Lots_ of bacon.

Garfield didn’t think he’d ever seen so much bacon in one place all his life. The team went nuts for it like they’d never tasted it before, grabbing handfuls and stuffing their faces over loud, table-wide conversation involving the day’s planned activities and how lucky they were to have _bacon_ , dammit all.

With a huff, he sat at the end of table and crossed his arms over his chest. His stomach growled at him angrily, and he said, “Yeah, I know,” as if his stomach could understand him. “I told him and he _still_ went and—” A plate of pancakes plopped in front of him then, cutting him off.

Sheepishly, he peered up at Victor, who looked back with a winning smirk on his face. “Blueberry,” he said succinctly, and then he walked back to start on the eggs. Real, non-tofu eggs, he announced, earning an enthusiastic round of applause. By the time he put the plate on the table it was already halfway empty, and he feared for a second that he might have lost a finger in the chaos.

“Y’all weren’t kidding about not eating good,” he commented once he’d surveyed himself and found that he still had all five digits.

“It’s not every day we get to eat something we all like,” Dick said through a mouthful.

“That’s always sorta been a problem,” Garfield agreed, spraying bits of pancake everywhere as he spoke.

“Congrats on being the solution,” Rachel said, smiling at him again in a way that made him feel needed. “We appreciate it.”

“Most amazing!” Kori said, clasping her hands over her bloated stomach and releasing an impressive burp that got Garfield hooting and Dick’s eyes to go wide.

“No problem,” he said. He felt just the tiniest bit more at home with each passing moment.

//

Victor honestly never expected the romantic tension to come to a head, so he couldn’t say he knew what he was seeing at first when he walked in on Rachel and Garfield, snuggled together on the latter’s bed under a fluffy blanket while they watched some cheesy horror film.

He had walked in to propose a movie night for he and Garfield, actually.

“What’s up, Cy?” the boy in question asked, completely casual as if nothing was amiss.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he said, trying not to sound let down. It wasn’t his place to step in, it never had been. It wasn’t like he owned Garfield or anything. “I mean, I just didn’t expect you two to…”

“To…?” Garfield raised an eyebrow. Rachel frowned.

“We’re not,” she said seriously.

At that, Garfield seemed to get the hint. “Oh, that. Wait, we’re not?”

“Are we?” Rachel asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“You’re cuddling. On a bed,” Victor answered, much too aggressively to be normal.

The other two looked at him, and he suddenly felt caught in the middle of a storm. He was going to turn around, going to stomp down the hall and let everyone know he was in a shitty mood. Rachel looked like she expected it; Garfield didn’t look like he even knew how they’d ended up in bed together in the first place.

And then, instead of an explosion, the winds of chance swept the storm clouds away.

“You wanna join in?” Garfield asked, going a little pink in the cheeks. “I mean, I’m cool with it.”

Rachel put her chin on Garfield’s shoulder. “There’s plenty of room,” she said—her version of assenting to the proposition.

Victor wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but he didn’t hate the thought, so he agreed.

By the time the movie ended, Garfield was curled up in his lap, snoring to high heavens, and Rachel was threading her fingers absently through the smaller boy’s hair. After a while, she looked up at Victor, who looked right back wordlessly.

The situation created a rarity: Rachel was the one to break the silence. “He likes you,” she told him, tickling gently under Garfield’s chin and watching as he gave an unconscious, breathy giggle and shifted a little in Victor’s lap.

“I gathered,” he admitted, feeling totally blank. How were you supposed to feel when something like this happened? He wasn’t sure. It just kind of felt…right.

“He likes me, too,” Rachel continued, cocking her head to the side a fraction. It looked more like she was talking to herself, if he were to be perfectly honest.

“Told ya,” Victor said.

“What are we doing?” Rachel asked, looking at him as if he had all the answers.

“No idea,” he replied. It was the truth. “It’s nice, though.”

“Yeah.” Rachel’s eyes were far away and hazy, like she was considering something. Once she came back to the present, presumably having reached a conclusion of some sort, she got comfortable against Victor’s arm and echoed back a simple, contented, “Nice.”


End file.
